How did a computer scientist such as Geoffrey Hinton manage to win a Nobel Prize in physics when computer science already has its own Nobel Prize equivalent in the Turing Awards?

You can have your cake and eat it too

Why wait any longer for the one you love?

[Younger voice] "But wait a minute, Ising-Lenz goes back to the 1920's. And didn't Hinton plagiarise rather a lot? He also didn't invent modern backprop, did he, that's Linnainmaa? And Amari preceded Hopfield, too. That's not a good look."

If atheists are so positive that there is no God, where is their proof that He does not exist?

Whatever.

(Bob Dylan, Nobel Prize for Literature, 2016)

In December 1973, when Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, comedian Tom Lehrer dropped his mic and stamped on it—satire had just died.

Would you let your son wear leggings to school?

"Hey guys, AI is pretty big so let's centre our prizes on it this year. We can get some attention, and it's all about advertising, at the end of the day, isn't it?"

[Older voice] "Mmm. What about Hinton, he's widely regarded? Nobody got fired for buying IBM"

"Good point, I'm sure we can swing it. And let's tack on Hopfield while we're about it."

Where are the big girls? This is the first time I've seen a bigger lady boy and that's awesome .. you should post more of them here, nothing wrong with a thick black lady

"Good idea, but how can we wangle something that says 'Physics'?"

… then anything is possible. There’s no rule that a Nobel Prize has to make sense.^*

^* Fibiger got the 1926 Medicine prize for the discovery of Spiroptera carcinoma (Don’t ask).

Where did the false claim that Haitian immigrants are eating pets come from?

There you go.^†

When he's standing, in front of you

"Naah, Linnainmaa is a Finn. Can't give it to a bloody Finnish mathematician. Let's go for drinks. Brännvin anyone?"

Is it true that people who are possessed by demons cannot see them until the demon is cast out? What is the reason for this?

[The basic structure of artificial neural networks] has close similarities with spin models in statistical physics applied to magnetism or alloy theory. This year’s Nobel Prize in Physics recognizes research exploiting this connection to make breakthrough methodological advances in the field of ANN.

Fortunately, we are privy to the discussion that led up to this:

"Didn't he do something with Boltzmann in it? That sounds physics-y. RBMs and stuff, eh?"

Can you summarize season 1 of "The Acolyte"?

Whatever.

"Where can we shoehorn it in? Chemistry is easy 'cos AlphaFold; but what about physics? A bit more challenging, right?"

A fly on the wall at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences

What is the meaning of "ero" in Japanese?

Why wait any longer for the world to begin?

(Mumbles of assent)

In awarding prizes, the Nobel Committees often seem only marginally more competent than MTG is at explaining meteorology. And if they can give a literature prize for lyrics like:

Has a cop ever said something to you which was completely unexpected?

They then move on to selectively provide their own version of history. But hey, it’s OK. They wanted controversy, didn’t they? Whatever.

^† They rationalise their decision thusly:

My 11 million SEK, Dr Jo.

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